To think managing zero food waste is impossible

[Blanc8447]

I’m talking every last floppy carrot, forgotten half bag of salad leaves, ends of bread…Really trying with this but there is always something. If anybody manages this- how?

I do what I can to minimise it, compost what's compostable and send anything else for the council food waste - somehow then it all becomes useful, either as food, as compost to grow future food or whatever they do with the council stuff - I think it might be anaerobic digestion for energy.

DH has started turning floppy (but not slimy) left over salad leaves into pesto or soup. It really does taste OK. I peel floppy veg very thoroughly and make that into soup. I wouldn't use it in salad or stir fry, but well-cooked, it's fine.

Ends of bread - toast to refresh / make a toastie rather than a buttie

carrots , leaves - add side salad to anything ( grate the carrots) . Most things also go into a veggie curry - actually that’s our clear out the fridge staple

we have very little food waste - had to cut a chunk off a bit of fruit last week

I live on my own, have very little food waste as I buy exactly what I know I like and will eat to the end! I don't eat much meat at all, so it's mostly eggs, cheese, tuna, fresh fish, so no waste there. Fish is in fillets in the freezer, no waste, I don't eat spuds so it's just veg (already frozen), just take out what I need. Bread I make my own wholemeal soda and slice and freeze in two slice portions. Same with the lovely wholemeal sliced loaf from M+S (for when I'm too lazy to make my own soda bread!), again two slice portions, take out as needed, defrost in minutes or just make toast! I freeze butter in portions, I freeze cream in portions, I make my own fruit mix for my yogurt and freeze that. Yogurts are a staple, the Greek one, I honestly never look at a date on them, they could be there for weeks, but are always fine.

I do find salads can be a bit of a waste for solos. I must grow my own lettuce one day lol.

Like the veg curry idea. Might start doing that on a Friday.

Have a hollow legged teenage boy. 😁Mine eats endless toast & jam. Likes veggie soup. Clears his plate

This week my food waste bin would only have had two egg shells, salmon skin and the bones from two pork chops. Any peel & pips go in the compost heap so I'm not it's worth doing for us. I don't think the bin men will bother stopping.

If you're dedicated, then veg scraps go in the freezer for stock. In my case they go out to the chickens (who get rid of a lot of scraps)

I did exceed my breadcrumb need previously, but since switching to a breadmaker, DS (teen boy) Just inhales it so quickly that we don't have spare bread. My blind-spot is mushrooms, which the chickens aren't in to unfortunately, and which don't freeze. I chuck them in the garden and something's eating them though.

Salmon skin, fried crispy, is my secret treat that I don't let the kids know exists when we have fish for dinner.... like buying bacon with the rind on, cutting it off, and frying it.. delicious...

We only throw away peelings so we are pretty much zero in the food caddy every week. But we tend to cook the same things over a fortnight or so period; we buy for those meals; and we quite often eat a batch of ‘fridge soup’ where I make veggie soup from any veg that’s starting to look a bit sad.

We’re a 99% veggie household so this might change on the rare occasions Mr Scarlet cooks a chicken as then we’d have the carcass.

We don’t have anything that needs to be chucked because it’s gone out of date though. That said, I did eat Skyr yoghurt that was dated 29 July today so I may yet drop down dead.

We used to live abroad and give any leftover food to our neighbour, who then fed it to his pigs.

This may not work where you are....

Only meat bones go in the bin. Everything else is eaten or composted (wormery).

The key isn’t dealing with grim food, it’s eating it before it gets grim.

We’ve started having a leftovers night. That isn’t for dribs and drabs so much as servings from previous meals.

I mean, the odd soggy leaf from the outside of a lettuce and so on….

Parmesan rind is amazing chopped up and put in the pasta sauce, by the way.

I do try to minimise food waste but I find a lot of fruit goes off so quick so thats always a waste so just started buying a lot less.

Ive done the 'save veg peelings to make a soup' and whilst it was nice, shouldn't have added the broccoli stems as it really made it very bitty so I probably should have sieved it first. But who wants soup in the summer? Though i did make a lovely pasta sauce with it a while ago, didnt dare tell the kids it was scrapy veg though.

And my bread seems to be going mouldy half way through the loaf at the moment which is driving me potty!! Assuming its the heat.

I'd love to be one of those cooks who can use it all up,but it also does come down to storage. Surely theres only so many half loaves of bread you can make in to breadcrumbs when, in reality, you use breadcrumbs once a month? And once you've made a soup, theres only so many you can have in the freezer at any one time?

I’ve never thrown anything out in 20 years

dogs 🐕 😂

Has anyone got a good vegetable soup recipe please?

Freeze veg past it’s date and make stock when you have enough.

With veg soup I sort of find less is more- so rather than mix too many different veggies just focus on a couple

onion base to almost anything then carrots ( sweet potatoes and lentils and corriander)

onion mushrooms and milk

Aspiring to waste less food is admirable. But some of the claims on this thread - e.g., "Fish is in fillets in the freezer, no waste" - aren't really meaningful.

The idea that a person buying whole fish to eat at home and throwing away the bones is somehow worse than a person who buys fillets, leaving the factory to dispose of the bones instead, is silly.

It's similar to claiming that the UK has low carbon emissions while ignoring the emissions generated in countries like China in the course of manufacturing the goods we consume.

We freeze all the end bits of bread and when we have enough we make stuffing or bread pudding. Both very easy.

@Tagyoureit I was finding that bread went mouldy in a couple of days in this heat. Now when I buy it I divide the loaf into two and freeze one half.

I mostly manage it. Friday dinner time is ‘use whatever crap is left in some way’ meals and we have a compost bin for the rest.

Vegetarian so we don’t eat meat and stale carbs go in the bird feeder (except bread which is frozen and if stale then I make croutons).

Some of the things we do that I didn’t see in my quick skim of the previous responses

• fruit that’s approaching its end gets chopped up and frozen, it then either becomes smoothies or is used in fruit pies/compotes/crumbles, i try to bag things into groupings that mix well together so apples, berries & plums, strawberries, blueberries & bananas
• potato peelings get air fried with a bit of oil and seasoning, they turn into a delicious crispy snack

Radical solution: a community pig.

Basically, for every group of houses there’s a community pig in a pen and you feed it your food waste. Then, when it’s good and fat, time for a community roast pig BBQ type thing.

Bonkers? Yes. Effective at dealing with food waste? Hell yes.

I tend to shop little and often for fresh stuff, walking there to get only what I need for the next day or so. I count the trip as part of my excercise so the extra time isn't wasted. I'm also flexible with what we eat, based on what I need to use rather than a meal plan.

Lettuce goes into a curry just like spinach

Not that bonkers- it’s what used to happen! (Prob not the bbq bit lol)

What helps me most of all is being a greedy cow. Especially with vegetables. I almost never have to throw away veg because I chow it down in volume. And I never have to throw away other foodstuffs.

(Except of course if I go mad and buy herbal tea or some obscure condiment, because naturally these stay in the kitchen cupboard for 10 years and then go in the bin.)

EDITED TO ADD: Another thing that helps is that I don't follow recipes. I'm much more comfortable just looking in the fridge/cupboard and using whatever's to hand. So I don't have ther problem of buying things for specific meals and then failing to finish them up.